Spotted: Thursday night, while the White House hosted a state dinner in honor of South Korean dignitaries, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer opted for Indian fare at a dinner with former Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan and television newsman Jim Lehrer at DC’s Bombay Club.

According to the Washington Examiner’s Yays & Nays column, the threesome arrived together at and left together after a two-hour dinner.

Spotted: Chief Justice John G. Roberts and his wife, Jane Roberts, attending the White House state dinner honoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel Monday night.

The Chief justice wore a tuxedo. Want to know what Mrs. Roberts wore? The Washington Post has the full fashion red carpet scoop.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor already made history by becoming the Supreme Court’s first Latina justice. But in less than two years on the bench, she has been setting precedent in another way – by speaking frequently and candidly at events across the country, demonstrating her ability to have fun, and developing a following that has made her one if the Court’s most well-known jurists.

In her official capacity, she’s no shrinking violet, notes Bloomberg News’ Greg Stohr. In her written opinions, she has spoken out in opinions and dissents in cases involving issues like prisoners rights and the death penalty. During oral arguments she is vocal as well. In one recent case, she interjected 31 times, Stohr noted.

But she has also made her voice heard off the bench, making appearances at schools, public speaking engagements and law school moot court competitions, often speaking candidly about her own experiences.

“Almost everything I’ve done I’ve been frightened about, including being a Supreme Court justice,” she recently told a crowd at the University of Chicago Law School.

At a recent US Berkeley law moot court competition, she said: “I do moot courts because, every once in a while, I need an injection of hope.”

Though she hasn’t been on the Court long, a Findlaw.com poll found that she is better known than all but two justices: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas.

And while several other justices also make frequent public appearances at moot court competitions and speaking engagements, Sotomayor’s celebrity justice status has been bolstered by hobnobbing with celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and salsa dancing in public. She can’t even have dinner with a colleague without the press taking note.

Sotomayor seems to be embracing her public persona.

“I think it’s important for the judge to be out in the world,” she said.

If you’ve ever visited the U.S. Supreme Court to watch oral arguments, changes are good that you saw a little verbal jousting between Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer. The Court’s two most verbal (and funniest) jurists don’t see eye to eye on a number of judicial philosophies.

But an audience in Lubbock Texas didn’t have to travel to Washington to see the two justices spar Friday. Scalia and Breyer brought their battle to the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center.

Round 1: The death penalty

“There’s not an ounceworth of room for debate as to whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment because, at the time the Eighth Amendment was adopted – the cruel and unusual punishments clause – it was the only punishment for a felony,” said the Sicilian orginalist from Queens, according to the Associated Press. “It was the definition of a felony. It’s why we have Western movies because horse thieving was a felony.”

“”And indeed there were whipping posts where people were flogged virtually to death up until the middle of the 19th century,” said the pragmatist Frisco Kid. “If we had a case like that today I’d like to see how you’d vote.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that’s stupid that’s not unconstitutional.” Scalia retorted later.

Round 2: Statutory interpretation

“There are ways of determine how and what the legislature was thinking of … to determine what is the object of this law,” Breyer said, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports.

“The only thing you know for sure is the words of the statute,” Scalia said. II don’t at all look to what I think the legislature thought. I frankly don’t care what the legislature thought.”

“That’s the problem,” Breyer quipped.

Round 3: Changing the Constitution

“There’s very little that I would change,” Scalia said. “I would change it back to what they wrote, in some respects. The 17th Amendment [which provides for U.S. senators to be elected by people instead of state legislatures] has changed things enormously. We changed that in a burst of progressivism in 1913, and you can trace the decline of so-called states’ rights throughout the rest of the 20th century. So, don’t mess with the Constitution.”

“There have been lots of ups and downs in the enforcement of this Constitution, and one of the things that’s been quite ugly – didn’t save us from the Civil War – is that there is a system of changing the Constitution through amendment,” Breyer said. “It’s possible to do but not too easy.”

While the verbal fireworks are fun, Breyer said the two don’t always lock rams.

“From the outside you think we disagree about everything, but we’re unanimous in our court about 40 percent of the time,” Breyer said.

But, Breyer added later: “We can disagree about almost anything.”

Politically savvy folks should know by now that if they put their thoughts or opinions down on paper – even in a confidential memo to the president – they will one day see the light of day.

Case in point: yesterday’s unearthing of a May 2009 letter noted Harvard Law School professor, Supreme Court litigator and presidential advisor Laurence Tribe wrote to President Barack Obama giving his thoughts on who should – and should not – replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who had just announced his retirement.

Tribe warned Obama that appointing “someone like Sonia Sotomayor” was a bad idea.

“Bluntly put, she is not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is, and her reputation for being something of a bully could make her liberal impulses backfire and simply add to the fire power of the Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas wing of the Court on issues [like] voting rights and the Title VII case of the New Haven firefighters,” Tribe wrote, referencing then Judge Sotomayor’s role in the 2^nd Circuit ruling in the controversial firefighter discrimination case Ricci v. DeStefano.

In the letter – posted yesterday by conservative commentator Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center – Tribe strongly urged Obama to select Elena Kagan, the former dean of Harvard Law whom Tribe knew well, for Souter’s seat.

Tribe wrote that Kagan’s “combination of intellectual brilliance and political skill would make her a ten-strike, if you will forgive my reference to bowling.”

Tribe also said he was a fan of 7^th Cir. Judge Diane Wood, who he called “more powerful intellectually than Sonia Sotomayor or any of the others mentioned as plausible prospects at the moment with the sole exception of Kagan.” But he noted that, given Wood’s age, she “would be likely to serve nearly a decade less than Elena and doesn’t appear to me to have the dynamic personality or the extraordinary diplomatic gifts for inspiring confidence and for moving others.”

In a National Review Online piece accompanying the letter, Whelan noted that after Sotomayor’s nomination, Tribe seemed to show support for the nominee in a New York Times article. “The president’s inquiries into the way she interacts convinced him that she would be a positive force in the chemistry of the Supreme Court,” Tribe told the Times.

“Translation of this last sentence: ‘I couldn’t persuade Obama not to pick her,’” Whelan wrote.

Tribe told the Wall Street Journal‘s Jess Bravin yesterday: “I don’t comment on my confidential advice to the president, and I regarded the letter I wrote in May 2009 as confidential. The fact that it was leaked doesn’t change my policy….I would also stress that the reservations I expressed about Justice Sotomayor prior to her appointment were amply refuted by the closer study I was later able to give her record and that have been fully negated by her performance as a justice.”

The robocall snafu that caused thousands of Nevada residents to be awakened in the middle of the night with a message from retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has opened a bigger can of worms.

Not only was the justice’s recorded message not intended to ring the phones of Nevadans at 1 a.m. Monday. O’Connor says she never intended for the message to be used at all in automated phone messages, blogs The National Law Journal‘s Tony Mauro.

“I did not authorize the use of my recorded statement as part of automated telephone calls to Nevada residents, and I regret that the statement was used in this way,” O’Connor said yesterday in a statement issued by the Court. “In addition, I view my efforts in support of judicial reform as consistent with the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges.”

The statement was released after a National Review Online piece questioned whether O’Connor’s advocacy for a ballot measure that would create a merit-based state judicial selection system violated ethics rules, since the retired justice still sits on federal courts. The Code of Conduct for United States Judges prevents federal judges from participating in political activities.

In the NRO piece, Ed Whelan notes that O’Connor cast the deciding vote Tuesday in Gonzalez v. Arizona, a 9^th Circuit ruling striking down an Arizona law requiring voters to present identification and proof of citizenship before voting. “That’s just one illustration why the ethics rules bar her from engaging in political-campaign activity while still sitting as a federal judge,” Whelan wrote. Mauro notes that Whelan is also president of the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center.

While Whelan asserts that O’Connor’s participation may violate ethics rules, DePaul University College of Law Prof. Jeffrey Shaman tells Mauro that the Code of Conduct does not apply to Supreme Court justices, although justices have said they adhere to the code anyway.

“The idea was that Supreme Court justices are so visible that any misconduct could be taken care of through the political process,” Shaman said.

In the 24 hours or so after news broke that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife called Anita Hill to ask her to apologize for “what you did with my husband,” pundits have offered their theories on why Virginia Thomas really made that call.

“Did Thomas intend the message to become public?” asks Emily Bazelon in a column for Slate. “Given her savvy and experience, it’s hard for me to imagine that she didn’t consider the possibility. And the voice mail makes a lot more sense to me as a way to resurrect this old tale to appeal to her conservative base than as an ‘an olive branch to [Hill].’”

Washington Post guest pundit Nancy Goldstein also doubts that Ginni Thomas’ call was a benign attempt to get an apology.

“More likely, Thomas and/or her handlers sought to create a diversion,” Goldstein wrote. “Funny coincidence: the very morning of the voicemail, The New York Times published ‘Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues,’ which asks whether it isn’t kind of problematic for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice’s wife to start a Tea Party-linked organization ‘dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress’ — and then go dialing for donors in her capacity as its leader.”

If the idea was to deliberately create a diversion from Mrs. Thomas’ Tea Party-related activities, it doesn’t seem to have worked. The Los Angeles Times has a piece on her work to repeal the health care law, which she deems unconstitutional. The piece points out that the constitutionality of the law is an issue that is all but certain to go before the Supreme Court. [UPDATE: The Times today reports that Liberty Central, the conservative group founded by Virginia Thomas, has backed off calling the healthcare law unconstitutional, removed such wording from its website on Thursday, and blamed staff errors for the statements. "Liberty Central assiduously avoids taking a position on the constitutionality of this, and other issues, and will continue to do so in the future," Sarah Field, the group's chief operating officer, told the Times. Probably a good move considering, again, the matter could go before Justice Thomas and the rest of the Court.]

The Boston Herald‘s Lauren Beckham Falcone has a simpler explanation.

“I think she saw a can of Coke and just lost it,” she wrote.

Much has already been written about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s quest to boost civics education. But did you know that she is also an avid jazz fan?

Those two passions came together in a new educational series in which O’Connor joins jazz legend Wynton Marsalis in a conversation about the role of jazz in American democracy.

“Jazz calls us to engage with out national identity,” O’Connor says in the program, called Let Freedom Swing: Conversations on Jazz and Democracy. “It gives expression to the beauty of democracy, and of personal freedom, and of choosing to embrace the humanity of all types of people. It really is what American democracy is supposed to be.”

The project – a collaboration by Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Documentary Group, and Columbia University’s Teachers College – features historians, musicians, and students discussing the connection between jazz and American democracy through themes such as freedom of expression and patriotism.

O’Connor describes the approach of jazz musicians in a way that sounds similar to the way the justices of the Supreme Court engage during conferences or oral arguments. “Each takes a turn performing and the others listen,” O’Connor says.

It was an eventful week leading up to today’s first oral argument of the new Supreme Court term.

On Friday, Justice Elena Kagan was officially welcomed as the Court’s newest member in an investiture ceremony attended by President Barack Obama and retired Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter.

That ceremony came days after the Court announced that, for the first time, audio recordings of all oral arguments will be made publically available on the Court’s website on a weekly basis. The recordings will be posted at the end of each week after the justices’ Friday conference. Previously, audio recordings, which are maintained by the National Archives, were not available until the beginning of the following term.

The court also previously allowed C-SPAN to broadcast audio of certain high-profile oral arguments later in the same day – a practice that will end under the new policy, according to C-SPAN.

“While we applaud The Court’s new policy, which helps advance the cause of greater public access to the institution, we do regret that it comes at the expense of occasional same-day release of arguments in cases with heightened public interest,” said C-SPAN President Susan Swain in a statement.  “Reporting on these key cases will be out for several days before the public is able to hear the arguments for themselves, in the Justices’ own words. We continue to hope that the Court’s next step will be same-day release of all oral arguments, and ultimately, television coverage of its public sessions.”

The Court also added a host of new cases to its docket Tuesday. The issues the justices will decide in those cases include whether a federal trial court can enjoin a state court from certifying a product liability class action involving the drug Baycol, whether a foreign company can be sued in state court for introducing a dangerous product into the stream of commerce that injured residents of that state, and whether a federal bankruptcy court’s award of damages in a counterclaim trumps a Texas state court ruling awarding a decedent’s estate to another party – the latest in the ongoing battle between the estates of Anna Nicole Smith and her late husband J. Howard Marshall.

More on today’s oral arguments and all other newsworthy developments from the Court on this blog and on Lawyers USA online.

Walter Dellinger wears many hats: head of the Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Clinic at O’Melveny & Myers’ Washington office, professor at Duke University School of Law, and former acting solicitor general, to name a few. Now, he’s added a new one – a fedora, if you will: he’s the expert online discussion leader for the Wall Street Journal. And the topic of the weekly digital chat? The AMC television show “Mad Men.”

Dellinger got the gig after his reader comment was spotted on an online discussion of the show on Slate Magazine‘s website. Now Dellinger heads up his own discussion each week after the show, which just began its fourth season, each Sunday night.

So what made Dellinger such a big fan? He explains in this week’s introduction:

“For me, the fascination is with the historical period in which it is set,” Dellinger wrote. “The time from 1960 when the first season began and to 1968 was a period of extraordinary transition in gender, race, politics and social culture. ‘Mad Men’ has thus far sought to capture both the literal reality and the ‘feel’ of that time from the vantage point of a group – New York advertising executives – whose very job it was to understand what is happening in the culture. That they so often fail to appreciate what is happening all around them is very much a part of that reality.”

He also noted that many of the show’s themes reflect his own experiences in the New York of the 1960s.

“I spent the summer of ’65 on Madison Avenue as a law clerk at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison,” Dellinger wrote. “I went to Paul, Weiss because I was troubled by the fact that almost all of the major Wall Street firms still refused even to interview Jewish law students. As a poor white kid from North Carolina who had almost never been to a really fancy restaurant, I was astounded by the lavish lunchtime drinking in the world of Manhattan law and business. My new bride, Anne (Maxwell) Dellinger was a technical writer and editor at a life insurance company about two blocks from the Time-Life building. She was one of the few (if any) women at her office who were not secretaries or cleaners. We have marveled at how accurately Mad Men recreates that period’s changing world of women’s roles. The treatment of what it was like to be gay seems to be extremely sensitive, and the shadow of Antisemitism is also deftly handled. It is not yet clear whether the show will have the same sensitivity to issues of race.”